CARACAS, the capital of Venezuela, is a city divided along class lines. It is divided between the rich east central area and the western inner city area, which merges into the shanty towns around the city. Today the division is political as well as economic.

DECADES OF one-party rule in Kenya in East Africa ended last weekend and people came out onto the streets to celebrate. Election results showed that opposition candidate Mwai Kibaki had easily defeated Uhuru Kenyatta. Kenyatta was the candidate of the outgoing leader, Daniel arap Moi. Moi became Kenya's ruler in 1978.

THREE DAYS of rage. Three days of hatred based on religious and ethnic differentiation. Three days of barbarism. That is all capitalism can offer the oil-rich and populous country of Nigeria, the world's sixth largest oil producer.

FRANCE SAW a wave of industrial protest this week in the biggest challenge to the country's right wing government since it came to office earlier this year. On Tuesday strikes and demonstrations took place across a range of public services.

THE VICTORY of Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador's presidential election on Sunday is another sign of the growing rejection of neo-liberal policies and associated austerity across Latin America. Some 13 million people live in Ecuador, and 60 percent of them exist below the official poverty line.

AUSTRIA'S FAR right Freedom Party saw its support collapse in the country's general election last weekend. The party caused shock across Europe when it won 27 percent of votes in the 1999 election and joined a coalition government with Austria's Conservative Party. Last weekend its support collapsed to 10 percent. The Freedom Party's key figure is Jörg Haider, who has praised Hitler's Nazis in the past.

IMAGINE IF an unarmed United Nations official was shot by Iraqi troops while he was inside a UN compound in Baghdad. Imagine if the Iraqi army then delayed an ambulance taking the official to hospital and the man died as a result.

OVER 100 people were killed by the gas which Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered to be pumped into the Moscow theatre siege last weekend. The horror of the siege's end gave a glimpse of the brutal methods used by the Russian state in Chechnya, methods which created the hostage crisis. Putin, along with Tony Blair and most of the British press, describe the Chechens as fanatical terrorists.

STRIKES ARE on the rise in Zimbabwe. Teachers, lecturers and health workers have all taken action over the last month as living conditions have deteriorated and rampant inflation has wiped out wage increases handed out before the presidential election. The Mugabe regime has responded with bitter repression, including torture and jailings. None of this is reflected in the British papers which are so quick to raise an outcry about the "sufferings" of white farmers

THE RESULTS of the general election set to take place in Turkey on Sunday are hard to predict, with opinion polls notorious for their unreliability. But the political instability gripping the country is likely to be reflected in the vote. It could be that none of the parties in the current coalition government will get a single seat in parliament. An election rule designed to prevent Kurdish parties getting parliamentary seats requires any party to get 10 percent of votes across Turkey to get any MPs.

MILLIONS OF workers struck across Italy on Friday of last week in the second general strike the country has seen in six months. They were protesting against attacks on workers by the right wing government of businessman and friend of Blair, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi wants to make it easier for bosses to sack workers.

DOCKERS IN the US began their second week on the picket lines this week. This was in response to a lockout of over 10,000 dock workers. The dockers known as longshoremen are part of the powerful and progressive ILWU union on the West Coast of the US.

UP TO 80,000 workers marched through Paris last Thursday to protest against the French Tory government's plans to privatise key industries. The protest and strikes which accompanied it were the first major challenge to the Tories since they came to office earlier this year

LUIS INACIO "Lula" da Silva came within a hair's breadth of winning the Brazilian presidential election on Sunday. The former left wing socialist and strike leader got 47 percent of votes, almost double that of any other candidate. Lula fell just short of the 50 percent he needed to win outright, and will now face a run-off on 27 October against Jose Serra.

UP TO 500,000 workers demonstrated in Madrid in Spain last Saturday against the right wing government's attacks on workers' rights. The demonstration is a continuation of a struggle that included a general strike in June. Spanish leader Jose Maria Aznar is a key ally of Blair in Europe.

HUNDREDS OF thousands of workers went on strike across South Africa against the policies of the ANC government last week. Bosses and the government claimed the strike was a flop but the Cosatu union federation, which called the action, disputed their figures. Cosatu leaders said that up to 60 percent of their members had taken part in the strike.

German Social Democrat leader Gerhard Schröeder has edged ahead in the polls by opposing George Bush's war drive in the run-up to Germany's general election on Sunday. Three polls at the end of last week put Schröeder, leader of the German equivalent of the Labour Party, a couple of points ahead of his challenger Edmund Stoiber, a hard right Tory.

AUSTRIA IS heading for a general election in November following the collapse last week of the Tory/far right government. The coalition's collapse is the result of a deepening polarisation between left and right.

THE SPANISH government this week won a parliamentary vote to make the Basque nationalist political party Batasuna illegal. Batasuna is the political wing of the ETA armed group. We spoke to INAKI ORTIZ of Socialist Worker's sister paper in Spain, En Lucha.